Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House

‘We live over in the town, six miles away.’

‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, remembering Hillsdale.

‘So, there won’t be anyone around if you need help.’

‘I understand.’

‘We couldn’t even hear you, in the night.’

‘I don’t suppose-’

‘No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that.’

‘I know,’ Eleanor said tiredly.

‘In the night,’ Mrs Dudley said, and smiled outright.

For Eleanor Vance, frustrated and bored with her city life, Hill House holds the promise of change. She embraces the opportunity to embark on Dr Montague’s oddly vague scientific project located in an isolated countryside house. His experiment promises a new start and a chance to put behind her memories of nursing an invalid mother. Eleanor is delighted to make friends with the round, rosy and bearded Dr Montague, and her fellow invitees, the sophisticated and cat-like Theo, and facetious heir to the estate, Luke. And yet, Eleaner soon realises that it is the house itself, which is central to their encounters, a building which broods and presses them down with the quiet weight of its own history.

Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, with its quirky, off-kilter architecture and uneasy relationships shows plenty of potential to unbalance the unwary. Acclaimed by Stephen King as a ‘nearly perfect haunted-house tale,’ and adapted for film in 1963 and 1999, Shirley Jackson’s gothic tale continues to be a classic text that is both entertaining and intriguing. In an era dominated by atheism, secularism and science, why is it that we are still drawn to the uncanny and the ghostly? What is it about gothic mansions filled with dark recesses that draws us in and fascinates us with their ghostly reminders of wronged lives? Could it be that, for all our modern sophistication, none of us fully shake our dread of unquiet places where we fear to tread alone?

Over four sessions (covering approximately 60 pages per session) we will follow the events at Hill House to their dramatic conclusion and consider wider aspects of gothic literature. Will you linger on the threshold wondering whether to go back? Or might you join the salon to find out what happens in Hill House after dark, when no one will come near?

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four meeting study on Zoom led by Nicky von Fraunhofer
• Wednesday 30 April to 21 May, 5.30 – 7.30 pm (UK)
• £140 to include opening notes and resources
• Recommended text The Haunting of Hill House, Penguin Modern Classics: ISBN 978-0141191447